Support

Quisk on Windows

Quisk is developed on Linux, but Microsoft Windows is fully supported as well. Before installing Quisk, be sure to
install a 32-bit version of Python 2.7
and a compatible wxPython. You must use the 32-bit version even if you
have 64-bit Windows because the Quisk extension module is 32-bit. You can install Quisk with either the
binary installer or the source tarball.
If you use the binary installer, Quisk installs itself as a package under
site-packages under Python 2.7, and adds its menu items under
Start/Programs. This is useful if you have other programs that use Quisk as a
package, such as a panadapter program. It is also easier, and is what most Windows users will expect.
You can uninstall Quisk by using the Windows Control Panel, add/remove programs.
But it will be troublesome to find Quisk files and the source files are not included. If you download the
source tarball, uncompress it into its own folder and run it with a command such as "C:\python27\pythonw.exe quisk.py". All files
including the special Windows files are available.

If you download and unpack the source distribution, you can put the Quisk folder anywhere you want, and
you will have easy access to all files. You can run Quisk from a terminal window using python.exe and look for
error messages if anything goes wrong. But you must create menu items and shortcuts yourself.

What is Quisk?

This is QUISK, a Software Defined Radio (SDR). QUISK is
the software that controls my receiver and transmitter. QUISK
rhymes with "brisk", and is QSK plus a few letters to make it
easier to pronounce. QSK is a Q signal meaning full breakin CW, and
QUISK has been designed for low latency CW operation. It works
fine for SSB and AM too. QUISK is written in Python and C, and
all source is included so you
can change it yourself.
The QUISK receiver can read the sample data, tune
it, filter it, demodulate it, and send the audio to the sound card
for output to external headphones or speakers.
The Quisk transmitter can accept microphone input and send that to
your transmitter via a soundcard or Ethernet. For CW, QUISK can mute the
audio and
substitute a side
tone. Quisk offers these capabilities:

Quisk can control the HiQSDR.

Quisk can control Hermes-Lite hardware.

Quisk can control SoftRock hardware for both receive and transmit.

Quisk can control the SDR-IQ by RfSpace, and several other hardwares.

If you have supported hardware, then QUISK is
ready for you to use. If you have other receive
hardware, then you will need to change the file quisk_hardware.py to
connect your receiver to QUISK. For example, if you change your
VFO frequency with a serial port, then you need to change
quisk_hardware.py to send characters to the serial port. The file
quisk_hardware.py is written in the Python programming language, a very
easy language to learn and use.

I have tried to make QUISK easy to modify so it can be used for
hardware other than my own. See the packages by
Leigh L. Klotz, Jr. WA5ZNU on http://pypi.python.org.

To install QUISK, download it from the links above.
Then read the documentation
and
the help.html file for
further instructions. Quisk can be installed on Linux with distutils,
easy_install, or you can just use the tarball. Just unpacking the
tarball is best if you plan to add files or modify Quisk. The
list of recent
changes is
in CHANGELOG.txt.

Here are some screen shots of QUISK. The usual graph and
waterfall display are available. I dislike radios that look like
computer programs so I designed QUISK with lots of
buttons (a personality quirk of mine I guess). Hopefully QUISK
looks like a radio and it is obvious how to use it. The
red/yellow/blue bars at the bottom of the graph are the band
plan. They mark the CW/SSB parts of the band, and show the ARRL
additions.
The band plan and colors can be changed in your configuration file quisk_conf.py.